For parents that are looking for a fun science project (STEM) with their child during the holidays.
Children are amazed by everything that magically appears from nothing. That is way growing bacteria or fungi on agar plates is such an incredible experience. These kind of magical experiences is exactly what science is al about.
If your child is young I would advice to start with explaining the magical germs all around us. Start with the fact that some germs are helping us by making bread fluffy (yeast cells) and some can make us sick. Explain the reason why we wash our hands. To start the experiment take some soil and explain how they help plants to grow and let the child sprinkle some sand on the agar plate, and put it in an incubator to grow the germs.
If your child is a little bit older, you can start doing real experiments and try to falsify hypothesis. We have gathered some free award winning experiments in an ebook which is free to download. With the free ebook your child will be able to perform experiments and test some hypothesis and maybe even tweak or come up with his/her own research questions. Which is exactly what a real scientist would do.
If you child seems to be bored because she/he already has done it a few times. It becomes time to introduce art in the science project. Start with growing germs on agar plates and take the most colour full ones and transfer them to a new agar plate where the child can start painting and making art. After culturing them in an incubator the colourful germ painting will come to live and will give a boost to the child motivation to keep interest in these magical creatures.
Rule number one just have fun experimenting.
Rule number two do not forget rule number one.
Please feel free to download the ebook:
E-book, real-scientific-experiments-with-agar-plates.pdf
If you are looking for agar plates, incubator and a soft cover of the ebook, This link is all you need to successfully grow germs.
If you are in living in the USA:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W47LM9G
For all other countries: